NME Apologizes To Morrissey For 2007 Article

The ongoing legal action between Morrissey and the NME just took another new twist. Britain’s only remaining weekly music magazine has apologized to the former Smiths singer for an article they published in 2007, which is the cause of an ongoing court case between the pair. The apology from the NME says the publishers “wish to make it clear that we do not believe that he is a racist,” which is the central allegation Morrissey is aiming toward the publication.

The case against the NME is still ongoing, with proceedings due to commence at London’s High Court from July 16 to 19. It remains to be seen whether this will go ahead following the magazine’s apology. The full statement is on NME.com, and looks like this:

In December 2007, we published an article entitled ‘Morrissey: Big mouth strikes again’.

Following this, Morrissey began proceedings for libel against us. His complaint is that we accused him of being a racist off the back of an interview which he gave to the magazine. He believes the article was edited in such a way that made him seem reactionary.

We wish to make clear that we do not believe that he is a racist; we didn’t think we were saying he was and we apologise to Morrissey if he or anyone else misunderstood our piece in that way. We never set out to upset Morrissey and we hope we can both get back to doing what we do best.